still on the line
by rleucos
Summary: "I suppose I must start with Serapis. Or Alexander." She frowned easily enough. "The Ptolemies? Trojans? Zeus? The Greeks as a whole?" Isis spoke their names easily enough, and I remembered officially I did not know the Greeks. or: Isis goes back for Harpocrates [TTT and Staff of Serapis spoilers. abuse content warning; AO3 cross post]


**AN: _technically_ a crossover with trials of apollo, but this is heavily focused on tkc. so spoilers for tyrant's tomb.**

I fell asleep in Brooklyn House after a long day of the anklebiters and the rouge thermos reappearing to haunt Jaz. Things had been calm after the big snake disappeared again: nomes hated my brother, I had two great boyfriends, and BAG was a slog.

Carter had disappeared to do his business in the First Nome with our uncle. I didn't envy him. He took Zia along with him, leaving me in charge of Brooklyn House until they got back. I didn't hate the idea. The mansion was still standing, wasn't it?

I talked to him nightly to check in with him/bully him (someone had to keep him on his toes). Phones didn't work in the First Nome, so we relied on the scrying bowls. Zia usually set up the connection for him. Not much happened in the First Nome; he seemed tired, but after a week of calls, the connection got fuzzy.

Naturally, it had to be his fault.

"Concentrate," I said, "Stop thinking about h-"

"I'm not," he interrupted quickly, which meant he probably was. His face in the bowl wavered, and our bickering did nothing for the connection as it faded in and out. It eventually cut off completely, and even Zia and I couldn't get it back on. Cleo said something about it the next morning too, and we received shabiti messengers from allied nomes complaining of the same problem. I eventually received a choppy phone call from him which was painful to hear (not the content, the actual quality of the call made me weep).

We were all at a lost for weeks. My idiot brother and his stunning companion eventually returned home among this. Amos knew nothing, and there wasn't anything in the scrolls of Brooklyn's library (Cleo's army of shabiti were much more cooperative after she allowed them to unionize). The nomes we were on good terms with had nothing, either.

I didn't have to wait long for answer after Carter got home. After a dinner full of no one understanding calculus (I was really disappointed in BAG; there was still requirements), I said goodnight to my boys and went to bed. Calculus would still be there in the morning, and who knew, maybe leaving my book at the foot of my bed would let me learn through osmosis.

My ba had other plans. No sooner did my head hit pillow did it decide to go off on an adventure. I woke up in the palace in what I assumed was Isis' room. Brightly lit and sparsely decorated, it looked rarely used. I'd be lying if I said I knew what the gods got up to in the Duat. Isis didn't strike me as the type to calmly sit around her room and I knew her to be too proper to do anything fun.

I hadn't seen Isis since Apophis. I'd heard from her on a few occasions, a note appeared on my birthdays, but that was really about it. Unsurprisingly, nothing about her had change, though she was pulling no punches tonight, which I appreciated. "I am in need of you again," she said. She left me little time for a rebuttal. "Yes, I am glad to see you again. It is good to see you. How you've grown. Now, I know to fix your scrying bowls."

Of course she knew how to fix them. I leaned against the wall. Everything was a bit too ritzy for my tastes. "What's in it for you?" There was nothing that said she had to want something, but gods often did.

"The solution to your problem lies in the mortal world. I need you as my host once more. You will come out uninjured." She stood taller than I, her eyes dropping to meet mine. "No fighting. You go alone."

A calm encounter involving Kanes rarely happened. I raised a brow. "Just what exactly are you getting up to?" I asked.

She gave me no answer. "Do I have your permission?" she asked.

I looked her over. I trusted her. It took us a while to get there, but I trusted her completely. She wouldn't let me die. She wouldn't harm me. "I guess. What're we getting up to?"

Isis looked past me. "Getting you your scrying back."

* * *

I hadn't been to California since I was a kid. I never had a reason to go back; Carter had been a few times for the sole nome that was in the state (the West Coast held other gods that we didn't know about, not at all), but both of us were fairly divorced from the state. I'd been out this way to meet Walt's family up in Washington, but I hadn't touched Californian soil in years.

Well, I still wasn't touching ground. Isis had brought me to where we needed to be after breakfast, situated atop a tall building. I didn't know where exactly in the state we were. Isis was being intentionally vague, I felt, so I couldn't find my way back. The air was ripe with a familiar magic, almost Isis', and I felt a chill run down my spine. I slipped my vision into the Duat, the magical subspace beneath our own world; from the shed, golden, mutated hieroglyphics floated out, reading child.

It was oddly quiet. For our height there was no howling wind. Isis sat waiting in my mind, and she had yet to elaborate what we were doing here.

Ahead, she said, turning my eyes to the shack before us. It didn't look like much, but I could feel the power coursing off of it. My fingers twitched around my staff. "That's it?" I asked.

She nodded. There was no readjustment period to having her back in my head. "What do I have to do?"

All I ask is for you to get me inside the shed. No matter what, do not flinch.

"What happened to no conflict?"

This is my fight. Not ours. I paused at her tone. It's hard to accurately describe what the goddess did in my head, but she was active. She fidgeted, she bit her nails. I don't know if it was happening in my head or a reflection of her in the Duat, but she was there, and now she clutched her own staff. Please, Sadie.

We needed our scrying bowls, and I'd been through plenty all ready. Surely nothing would be worse than Apophis, not with Isis on board.

I started to close the distance, wading through the thick miasma of magic; Isis pressed tighter against my mind. The door was warm to the touch, and I pushed it open.

I was forced to my knees and was immediately met with a splitting headache. Isis continued to shove magic into me in somewhat of an attempt to console me. I opened my mouth to say some colorful things to Isis, but to my immense horror, I couldn't speak. A great day for Walt, maybe, but not for me.

It hurt to lift my head. I had a feeling my limited movement was a boon granted by Isis. My eyes eventually rose high enough to see...not a monster, or a demon, a spirit, or anything I could handle.

Before me was an olive-skinned boy with a side-lock of hair who couldn't have been older than ten. His eyes looked familiar. He wore a toga, too, which was a look few could pull of. Worse yet was the fact that his hands where bound by wires that fed into a whole series of them. I wasn't tech savvy, but I had a feeling that axes weren't a standard addition.

He...didn't look happy to have company. His shoulders tensed tightly, and the axes above him rattled.

Naming gods tended to be my brother's specialty, but Isis seemed to know the kid. Harpocrates, she said unperturbed by stifling silence. His name is Harpocrates. He is Serapis and I's mute son.

My throat tightened further; Serapis, again. Her years of wisdom poked through the boundaries I kept up since becoming her Eye. Harpocrates as oppsed to Haroeris, younger versus older respectively. A third Horus? Not quite, Sadie. Harpocrates as opposed to Heru-pa-khered. Different boys.

I struggled to stand. He is the god of silence: not quite Egyptian, not quite Greek, she said. I made it to a crouch before Harpocrates weighed me back down, falling backwards, my head smacking off the floor. If you feel as if you're going to black out, let me know. Your task here is done. I wish I could say something, but his god of silence shtick was affecting our mental link, too, and it seemed that only Isis, goddess of magic, could get through.

I used my staff to slide myself back up. There was a strain as Isis made herself appear. She must've been serious to bust the wings out. The iridescent wings fluttered behind her, filling the rest of the room. Her white shift gown touched the floor. "Enough, Harpocrates. Leave the girl alone," she said firmly.

His bound wrists jangled. The god shifted on his mat, and he seemed to have some leeway in movement. He said nothing but the pressure on my shoulders lessened.

"Good child," she praised. I felt the magical weight in her words slicing through his aura. How much of her was here anyway?

I was flooded by the image of Isis standing by Serapis, though she was the focus. Her face was radiant in the sun, and she smiled boldly. Isis didn't seem surprised by anything, nodding. "It is I, dear son. You have gotten better at speaking, I see." I thought it was a bad joke, one that Isis certainly wouldn't make, but it seemed I was wrong. She had called him mute, and he spoke through projecting his memories.

He was unflinching. Isis took a few steps forward, kneeling in front of him. Harpocrates stayed still, though his eyes blazed with an anger as they stared past her shoulder. "Are you interfering with our communications, my boy?" she asked. He was a small kid compared to Isis, and I shifted to get a better look. The kid nodded. "Why?"

I couldn't hear myself breathe. This wouldn't be a conflict. Even if he was interfering in our communications, he was Isis' child. Looking at him, I saw bits of Horus, and subsequently, bits of Isis. Plus, he was a kid. Older than some civilizations, but a kid. My Ha-dis were picky.

The next memory to float through the air portrayed him alone, waiting in a dilapidated temple; a statue of Isis stood in the corner. Next, he was elsewhere, approached by men I didn't recognize but they gave me a bad feeling. These scenes were potent. I could feel their latent emotion beneath the very surface, but I had a feeling Isis' Leave the girl alone applied to this as well.

Isis seemed to understand. "Oh, my Harpocrates." I was shocked to hear her voice quiver. Her hand reached out to touch his cheek, and he winced. "What is going on? Why does Rome want you?"

Rome. That was certainly something I wasn't suppose to know about.

Harpocrates tugged on his wires. The axes waved but did not fall. His eyes finally looked down, hidden from my sight. While I wasn't a current victim of his, the air still changed to something...more melancholy. His memories spoke of silenced demigods too and fleets of yachts bobbing across the waves. Isis, always, understood what this meant. "The emperors," she spoke it like a curse, and I felt like we were going to have a meeting.

His memories changed. No longer were we looking in the now, but we were back in his childhood. Isis was splendidly framed, always a smile or a hand to hold. It was the height of the good in his life. Her. His mother.

She nodded. I couldn't see her face. "My lovely son."

Then, she disappeared. The world darkened, and he was very alone, more alone than he had ever been. No mother, no father, an only child with no pantheon to call home, left on his own for almost two thousand years. Today, Isis reached out to run her fingers through his plait of hair. "I know, dear son. Will you let Mother explain herself?" she asked. I saw his hands move in his lap. Not quite sign language, but Isis seemed to understand, a language between a mother and a son. "Thank you, Harpocrates. I hope for your forgiveness."

Isis sat down in front of him, her hand never leaving his face. I watched the axes jolt in their prison. I didn't see Isis taking a blow to the head well. "I was imprisoned for a long time, son. Almost half of my life," she began, and I knew this bit. I felt a little awkward here, being witness to this scene, but I didn't know how far I could leave without affecting Isis. "After we were freed, we had to deal with the Snake, but you were on my mind. I mean it.

"After the snake, I searched for you. I did. I combed Egypt for you. I stopped by my old temples, Greek, Roman, wherever, looking for you. It seems you already grabbed before I could get to you." Isis laughed. She leaned in, unafraid, resting her forehead on his. "Every day, Harpocrates, I wanted you. I want all my sons safe with me. We could read together, spend the day in the gardens, teach you the instruments you always wanted to. You could be a good, Egyptian prince."

His shoulders shook. I looked away, suddenly finding that I forgot how to tie my shoelaces. The air was filled with scenes of Isis staring scornfully at Serapis, which I couldn't blame her for. I met the man once and I'd rather eat Gran's scones than deal with him again.

"I did hate your father," Isis agreed, "but my rage at your father was never a rage at you. You are my sweet child all the same. Please don't take my unintentional abandoning of you as a hatred. I love you, Harpocrates."

I had a feeling that now, more than ever, I shouldn't look. Still, I gave a peak, and his arms wrapped around her in a hug, She jolted slightly, the wires one pull away from taut, so I kept my eyes on the axes instead of the child god (probably) crying.

His sobs were silent too. The only noise in the air was Isis soothing him with a life he never got to have, promises of her love and a promise that he was her son as much as Horus or Anubis.

It was hard to tell how much time passed.

"I wish I could take you with me," she said. "You don't deserve this, son."

The axes moved. Another peak into this private scene showed me that their embrace was over, and Isis was nodding along with whatever he said. "We don't have the strength to go toe-to-toe with the Romans right now, but I will come back. Father is gone: it will just be us." She was quiet, and I assumed he was talking again, but the Isis I knew shot out. "Do not talk like that, Harpocrates. Please," she said firmly. "I will not answer that question because you don't need to know."

I cleared my throat, but it made no noise. Still, Isis knew me. I didn't mean to interrupt, but I didn't want to leave here without our goal done. "Can you leave our scrying bowls alone, please?" she asked. Her voice sounded loose, one plea away from crying. "Thank you. You are a good son. I will be back. We will be together."

* * *

I didn't know what to make of Isis half the time. She was pushy, demanding, a bit of a nag at times, but I had seen her kindness, and I knew it existed. I knew she cared for me, for Mom, for her sons, but she wasn't always the best at...healthily expressing it.

The sight of her staring unseeing at her hands did nothing to soothe the knot in my stomach. Her fingers, adorned with rings, fit snugly around the white cup of overpriced coffee. I doubted she would drink it, but, hey, it wasn't hurting anybody.

Her shoulders rattled with a sigh. "I do not wish to burden you, Sadie. I find it incredibly considerate that you offered to listen, but this is heavy, and you are young." I watched her try to smile. "I prefer to offload myself on your mother. She is good at keeping me company." She was closer to Mum, I knew, since Isis could see her whenever she pleased. She mimicked Mum in her physical appearance, too, not that I could imagine Isis in linen trousers or combat boots.

Sometimes, I still saw the woman who said she loved me while I lay dying.

"I don't mind," I promised. I wonder what she saw. Was she halfway in the Duat right now? It gave me a raging headache to split my vision, but I didn't live like that. "You seem kind of...down," I said.

Isis didn't speak for a few minutes. Her silence ate at me, deafening over the noise around us. I considered calling Walt to bring Anubis around, probably her more emotionally available son that I had on speed dial, but I thought against it. I knew her, as her former Eye, and while I barely knew what to make of her, I knew we were opposites: she was calculated in what she felt, what she thought, and she tried to keep herself compartmentalized.

"I suppose I must start with Serapis. Or Alexander." She frowned easily enough. "The Ptolemies? Trojans? Zeus? The Greeks as a whole?" She spoke their names easily enough, and I remembered officially I did not know the Greeks.

I knew jackshit about Alexander the Great besides the sheer basics. I had a tangent knowledge thanks to my brother. Serapis I had personally met and dealt with. "Serapis. I know the gist."

She leaned back, and it was clear Anubis got his mannerisms from her. "You are a wise girl," she praised. "You and the other girl met him, of course. I wish I could say he was different then than now, but I cannot. He has always been so."

"Forced to serve him," I recalled suddenly. Isis' eyes finally raised from the table, finding mine. "He-He recognized me as your host. He said that you were forced to serve him." I had been too preoccupied at the time to recognize the vileness in those words, but hearing it now turned my stomach.

Nodding solemnly, she carried on. "If I had it my way, I would only be wed to Osiris. There is no man I love more. I was wed to Serapis to unite us with the Greeks, but he did not care for me as a wife." She laughed, which was a sound I did not associate with Isis. Popping the lid off of her cup, she took her first drink. Unnecessary, but it was better than wasting it. "I suppose he was a good Greek husband, and he expected me to be a good Greek wife. He was...what is the phrase? The sum of the parts? He was sums, no whole.

"I did my duty as wife, but I avoided him while I could. I hated everyday of it." I was too young to truly understand it, just as she said, yet I couldn't see Isis subservient to any man. She spoke her mind with a clear, precise I could blow you up at any moment sort of atmosphere, demanding respect in all she did.

I wish I knew what to say.

Isis sat her drink down, grabbing a napkin and summoning a pen. My brain could barely process seeing an ancient goddess in a coffee shop doodling with a slim black pen, but it eventually caught on. Gods know I had enough problems seeing Anubis using a phone. "But then Harpocrates was reborn. Where do I begin? I'm afraid I will bore you if I go into the exact details of how he exists. Harpocrates is both a god in his own right and my little Heru. It is not like myself being Hellenized or the Greeks becoming Romans."

Heru. A memory, Isis' memory, pricked behind my eyes. I repressed it for now. I was good at making sure her memories stayed where they were suppose (being twelve and having your mind flooded by five thousand years of knowledge and memories could be...a little much, but I had learned to live with it), but her words itched at me. "I get it," I said. I didn't want to talk much. I only wanted the stress to leave her, the sight of her kidnapped son sobbing in a shed in Oakland.

Hieroglyphs floated off of the napkin, and reading them in the air spoke of her lost son. I felt like I was intruding, so I looked away, taking a sip of my drink. I'd be up late. Anubis could keep me company while Walt slept (he wasn't dying anymore, but I wasn't taking any chances).

"Harpocrates was the one piece of Osiris in Serapis," she said softly. Her voice sounded terribly distant. Mum would be up late too. "He was my one joy, my Harpocrates. I had lost my Heru to his rage in his displacement, but Harpocrates-" she sighed somewhat dreamily. "Being a goddess means there are no surprises when having children: I lie with Osiris, and Horus is born. I lie with a piece of Osiris, a piece of Horus is born."

It made sense, I supposed. I didn't understand all the tidbits of how the Egyptians had reworked themselves over the years, but even I knew who Isis' children were. She had her gripes with them, but she would, and had, killed for them.

This wasn't my place.

"I did not get to keep my Harpocrates for long. Serapis accused me of making him soft. We were separated. He spent time among the Greeks, and I only got to see him when Serapis needed me as his queen." A sharp tearing sound drew my gaze downward. Her napkin of doodles split down the middle, edges of the paper burning gold. I may have been Ha-di's biggest fan, but here wasn't the place. Gas leaks could only explain so much.

I reached across the table, laying my hand atop hers. Her magic coursed through me stronger than any espresso. Her words were strong, but like this I felt a small tremor in her. She did not have to say it, and I knew it through my own intuition: her children did not get taken from her. Suppressed first by a husband she did not want with only her child for comfort, I was amazed that Serapis lived. I didn't know where he went when Annabeth and I dealt with him, if he returned to the Duat or wherever the Greeks recharged, but I was confident Isis could send him to the darkest parts of it when prompted.

She was strong.

Her shoulders straightened. Isis turned her hand up, our palms touching. "I failed him, Sadie. I atoned for Heru. I atoned for Osiris, I made my peace with Ra. And now my Harpocrates is a weapon used by the Romans, and I cannot save him. I've left him to-" She choked. "He didn't always have that side-lock, you know. Child Horus, of course, but when he was young he had his father's curly hair. I-I left him for thousands of years, and for some reason, in all his pain, he's starting to-"

I gave her hand a squeeze. I could pretend not to notice the tear starting to roll down her cheek. I couldn't understand her grief, not in full, for I was young. I doubt even Mom could console this level of grief. Still, seeing Isis shaken so, at the verge of crying for the second time in a single day, unnerved me more than the most unfettered version of Is'fet.

"But you saw him," I said. "I'm sure that means something to him. He's not mad with you, Isis. Just the circumstances."

The napkin burned up into a pile of sand, and hieroglyphs about Harpocrates stuck to my sleeve. I carefully picked them off; they disappeared under my fingers. Isis' hand twitched beneath my own as she leaned back in her seat. She looked as regal as ever. "I thank you, my girl." Her words were as strong as ever, though she was looking over my head. "Your scrying bowls should be fine now. I assure you that." I recognized when a conversation was over, and I wouldn't push her on the abandoning your child topic.

I smiled for her. "Thanks. Couldn't have done it without you." I gave her hand a final squeeze before letting go. It was getting late, nearing six, which meant it was almost nine in Brooklyn. I didn't want to worry Carter more than I had to. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I pushed my chair out, standing up. "Go home. Hug your sons-"

"-he won't let me-"

"-and bother Mum for me. Keep in touch, yeah? Maybe we can catch lunch soon," if only so I could check up on her.

Isis nodded briefly, a short jerk of her chin. "Be good, Sadie."

* * *

**title loosely based off of wichita lineman by glen campbell. it's a banger. i took a few liberties to work within riordan's interpretations of these characters (harpocrates is typically depicted in statues w curly hair, but riordan gave him the pony tail), but this was mostly inspired by reading staff of serapis and hearing serapis say, in regards to isis, "she was forced to serve me." that's...a yikes.**


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